Tooth extractions related to tooth decay cost the NHS £51.2 million in the 2024/5 financial year, up from £45.8 million the previous year, according to recently published statistics.
The Office for Health Improvement and Inequalities (OHID) has released statistics on children’s hospital tooth extractions for the past financial year. These suggest that NHS spending on tooth exports in this period reached £87.7m, with caries-related exports accounting for almost 60% of the total.
The data shows that the number of young people aged 0 to 19 who were subjected to decay-related deportations rose by 11% to almost 34,000. The total number of exports in this age group had also increased by 14% to more than 56,000, with exports not related to decay due to factors such as position anomalies increasing by 20%.
Tooth decay accounted for six in 10 of childhood exports – the highest proportion of these cases being in the five to nine age group.
The number of tooth exports has been steadily increasing since 2022, following a sharp decline due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Are the extraction rates of baby teeth the same in the UK?
Childhood export rates varied dramatically in different regions of the UK. While the UK average was 251 exports per 100,000 children, Yorkshire and the Humber had more than double the incidence at 504 per 100,000. The East Midlands had the lowest rates, with 73 child removals per 100,000.
Children in more deprived areas had more than three times higher tooth extraction rates compared to those in less deprived areas.
Dental caries remains the leading cause of hospitalization in childhood.
British Dental Association (BDA) president Eddie Crouch said: “These appalling statistics are a disgrace to governments past and present. Tooth decay cannot be undisputed as the number one reason children are admitted to hospital.
“Targeted prevention programs are now in place, but there is still little sign that the government is willing to rebuild access to care. Dentists can’t fix these problems in the first place if we don’t catch them early.”
“Zip code should never dictate a child’s health”
Jo Cooper, general manager for UK and Ireland at Haleon, said the figures represented “a worrying reminder that far too many are still facing preventable oral health problems”. He said: “Prevention must be prioritized, with stronger action to help families build good oral health habits from an early age.”
Charlotte Eckhardt, dean of the School of Dental Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, expressed concern at the scale of the geographical differences.
He said: “No child should be hospitalized for an almost entirely preventable disease. Tooth decay causes unnecessary pain, missed school days and avoidable hospital admissions at a higher rate in 2025 than last year. This direction of movement must be reversed.
“Evaluating the supervised toothbrushing system is a welcome step. It will give us a clearer picture of what is working and where further improvements are needed.
“If the Government is to meet its target of transforming the NHS dental system by 2035, it must ensure that every child can see a dentist when they need it. A zip code should never dictate a child’s health.
“This information is not a complete dataset”
However, the British Society of Pediatric Dentistry (BSPD) said the statistics were an “incomplete dataset”.
BSPD chairman Oosh Devalia said: “Care must be taken not to read too much into the variations in the hospital incident statistics which have just been released, as this information does not constitute a complete data set. For example, activity within community-based services is important and often not included.
“BSPD urges policymakers to focus firmly on the priorities we know will help turn around children’s oral health – such as supervised tooth brushing, community water fluoridation and early access to dental teams.
“We also need to reduce under-16s’ sugar consumption – and, crucially, push for every child to have a ‘dental home’, with access to a dental check-up by their first birthday. Together these interventions will work to reduce the number of hospital episodes for children.’
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